Perception, place, and the patterns between them
I’m Thorsten Becker, an Environmental Perception Specialist, author, and creator of perceptual mapping systems. I design written guides and visual methods that help people notice how the places they inhabit influence how they feel, think, and find their way.
My work grows out of a lifelong interplay between sensitivity, observation, and structure, and from a need to understand how environments shape inner experience. These tools support highly sensitive individuals, as well as educators, designers, reflective practitioners, and anyone interested in the sensory dimension of perception.
I did not arrive here through a single discipline. Whether writing narrative features as a journalist, translating complex ideas into clear explanations, or turning data into decision-ready insights, my work has always centred on helping people understand, orient, and express.
Growing up highly sensitive, I relied on forests, quiet corners, certain streets, and digital worlds to steady myself. These places taught me early that surroundings are never neutral. They shape mood, attention, and direction long before we have words for it.
Over time, I came to see sensitivity not as fragility but as a finely tuned perceptual instrument. Systems thinking helped me interpret what that instrument noticed — turning impressions into patterns and patterns into meaningful direction. Mapping gave structure to these insights and made complexity navigable.
I study how natural, urban, and digital environments influence perception, clarity, and emotional well-being. This focus led me toward what I call sensory cartography — the practice of mapping how surroundings and sensory experience interact.
To make this visible and usable, I create perceptual frameworks and mapping systems that help people see, articulate, and orient within their sensory landscape, including:
FEMS – Fuzzy Emotion Mapping System
CORE – Cognitive Orientation & Relation
Stellary – Sensory Memory Constellations
PACE & SCENT – Rhythms of motion and return
These methods support clarity, reduce overwhelm, and offer accessible ways to navigate change in personal, creative, and professional contexts.
Throughout my life, I searched for a way to bring sensitivity, structure, and meaning together. I wanted to give form to experiences that are felt deeply yet difficult to articulate. I developed these systems because I needed them myself: tools to observe inner movement, understand environmental influence, and regain orientation when complexity becomes overwhelming.
Many others look for similar guidance.
We all move through environments that leave subtle traces — forests, cities, workplaces, digital worlds, and home spaces. Often we underestimate how strongly these surroundings influence our emotional state, our perception, and our sense of possibility. When we begin to notice these interactions, clarity becomes possible and orientation becomes steadier. Overwhelm loses its hold.
My work exists to make this kind of awareness tangible.
If you are new here, begin wherever your curiosity leads.
For practical entry points, you might explore:
• In Practice
• Nature, city, and digital worlds
• Mapping
• Rhythm
Each section offers a different way to understand how we move through environments and how environments move through us
Over the years, I noticed that my way of observing followed the same pattern in every setting: sensing, tracing, mapping, and translating experience into meaning. This pattern eventually became something I could structure and share.
To give it form, I gathered its elements into the Attuned Perception Framework (APF) — a system that turns feelings, thoughts, and memories into visual guides connected to place.
APF brings together four forces that have shaped my work: sensitivity as perceptual strength, systems thinking as structure, environments as influence, and mapping as a means of clarity. It is not a fixed model, but an adaptive framework that evolves with context and helps explain how perception and orientation interact.
The Attuned Perception Framework reflects how perception unfolds in daily life. It brings together four elements:
Pathways that show how different environments influence perception
(nature, urban texture, digital worlds)
Mapping methods that give form to what we feel, think and remember
(FEMS, CORE, Stellary)
Rhythms and resets that support motion and reflection
(PACE and SCENT)
Companions that remind us perception is relational
(people around us and inner aspects within us)
Together, these elements turn lived experience into orientation. Whether used for personal clarity, creative insight, or professional work, APF encourages an intentional way of noticing and understanding experience that is grounded, adaptable, and human.
From sensory walks and emotional mapping to reflective writing and game-informed perception, APF helps align surroundings with clarity, well-being, and direction.
The pathways of the Attuned Perception Framework show how different environments shape perception. Each pathway highlights a distinct mode of sensing and orienting, whether through nature, urban texture, or digital worlds. Together, they offer complementary ways of noticing how spaces influence emotion, clarity, and presence.
A nature-based pathway of observation and sensory orientation
Waldverloren explores how clarity emerges in natural environments. It invites slow movement, attentive noticing, and a subtle awareness of rhythm, light, scent, and sound.
Here, the forest becomes a field of presence rather than an escape. Perception softens, and self-awareness deepens through quiet participation in the landscape. Each walk becomes a dialogue between body and environment.
Waldverloren nurtures orientation through stillness and motion and shows that feeling lost can be the beginning of seeing clearly.
A study of sensory retreat and resonance within the city
Sinneszuflucht examines how calm, beauty, and inspiration appear within the textures of urban life. It views the city as a layered fabric of architectural forms, materials, colors, and atmospheres.
Quiet courtyards, cafés, passages, and well-crafted spaces create micro environments that restore balance. They reveal how the built world can offer orientation and repose through detail, care, and resonance.
Wandering becomes a process of finding, a way of rediscovering presence through attentive movement and the subtle qualities of place.
Exploring resonance and empathy through designed spaces
Virtualresonanz considers how video games create emotional presence and narrative coherence. Designed environments become spaces for exploration, empathy, and reflection.
Game worlds act as laboratories of perception where architecture, sound, and interactivity shape inner states as vividly as physical surroundings. They reveal how design, rhythm, and feedback loops foster focus, calm, or engagement.
Virtualresonanz extends environmental psychology into the digital realm and shows that virtual places can evoke genuine resonance and well-being.
The mapping systems of the Attuned Perception Framework translate emotion, thought, and memory into visual form. They turn inner experience into something that can be seen, understood, and oriented. Each system focuses on a different aspect of perception, and together they offer gentle ways to externalise what moves within.
These tools work entirely analog with pen and paper. Detailed instructions are available in the APF Library (PDFs) as PDFs. For those who prefer digital methods, browser-based versions exist. They require no account and store no data.
Additional variants for game designers and researchers are available in the APF Web Apps collection. APF Web Apps collection.
A Visual Guide to Inner Clarity
FEMS translates emotion into visible form. It maps how feelings cluster around the Self by tone, intensity, and proximity, revealing the structure of the emotional landscape. Through color, size, spacing, and waveforms, FEMS shows resonance, tension, and relational patterns.
Every map begins with SELF at the center. Emotional Aspects represent influences such as people, roles, or memories. Their arrangement shows pressure points, sources of support, and areas of potential release. Optional symbols add nuance for growth, blockage, or softening.
FEMS is contemplative rather than diagnostic. It externalises emotion in order to invite awareness, clarity, and self-understanding.
A System for Thought in Motion
CORE gives structure to non-linear thinking. It turns ideas into spatial constellations rather than lists. Each idea, called a chunk, receives a role that reflects its function within a developing structure. Colors from the FEMS palette can be used to show emotional tone or emphasis.
The four-step loop of Chunk, Orient, Relate, and Express guides cognition from idea to clarity. Chunks are placed in meaningful relation, connected by lines of flow, contrast, or support. The resulting map can be transformed into an outline, argument, or plan.
CORE captures complexity without flattening it. It supports writers, educators, researchers, and creatives in visualising how ideas interact and evolve.
A Constellation of Memory and Meaning
Stellary maps memory through sensory fragments. Images, textures, sounds, or words are arranged around a Core Star that holds the main insight. The constellation concludes with a Destination Planet, a marker for reflection or transition.
Where FEMS maps emotion and CORE maps cognition, Stellary reveals how memory and sensation intermingle. It favours resonance over sequence and intuition over chronology. Memories become tactile and spatial, allowing reflection to unfold through placement rather than explanation.
Stellary is a way to honour experience. It preserves moments as patterns that deepen continuity and belonging.
Waymarkers and Companions support the movement between perception and reflection. They provide rhythm, grounding, and relational context. While the pathways show where perception is shaped, and the mapping systems show how we make sense of it, the waymarkers and companions help us stay balanced along the way.
A Fourfold Loop for Sustained Clarity
Purpose – Action – Calm – Energy
PACE transforms clarity into steady momentum. It begins with Purpose, which identifies what matters now, followed by deliberate Action, restorative Calm, and renewed Energy.
The loop nurtures gentle, consistent progress. It supports intentional movement and offers a way to regain balance when direction becomes uncertain.
A Sensory Ritual for Re-centering
Sense – Center – Envision – Note – Tend
SCENT acts as a sensory reset. It engages the senses to restore attention, recenters awareness, and prepares for renewed motion. It is useful during transitions, overwhelm, or creative fatigue.
SCENT creates space for a quiet return, a moment of equilibrium before the next step forward.
Relational Anchors of Resonance
Companions remind us that perception is relational. They appear through the people around us and the inner aspects within us.
External Companions include friends, collaborators, and mentors who witness, reflect, and accompany our unfolding understanding.
Inner Aspects represent familiar ways of perceiving and responding, such as the Observer, the Dreamer, the Caretaker, and the Explorer. They offer different vantage points that help us interpret experience.
Together, they form a relational field that supports clarity and orientation.
Alongside the analog and digital mapping tools, I have created several optional GPT companions. Their role is supportive. They offer prompts and structure for those who enjoy working digitally, yet the essential work of perception still happens within attention, reflection, and experience.
Each GPT corresponds to a part of the framework:
Clarity Mirror supports emotional reflection through FEMS
Clarity Mapper Pro helps researchers and practitioners analyse FEMS maps
CORE Muse guides the structuring of ideas
Resonance Compass explores personal resonance patterns (see Resonance Compass Framework, a supplement to APF)
They are quiet assistants rather than central elements. Their purpose is to make reflection more accessible, not to replace your own perceptive process.
FEMS Interpretation
Interprets your FEMS map (image/JSON): surfaces dominant nodes, resonance vs. dissonance, anchors, and offers gentle reflection prompts. (Not clinical guidance.)
FEMS → Numeric Features
For researchers & practitioners: converts FEMS maps into numeric features (counts, sizes, distances, resonance/dissonance amplitudes, sub‑nodes) with CSV/JSON export for analysis.
Nonlinear Structuring
Guides CORE mapping: tag chunks, arrange spatially (Chunk–Orient–Relate), and turn the map into an outline or talking points.
Resonance Orientation & Reflection
Assists in exploring personal resonance patterns across emotional, sensory, and contextual domains. Based on the Resonance Compass Framework, it helps identify alignment and orientation through gentle reflective prompts.
Much of my work continues through dialogue, writing, and shared inquiry. I develop essays, guides, and practical materials that help people explore environmental perception in their own contexts. These resources support designers, educators, reflective practitioners, and anyone seeking a more perceptive, sensory-aware approach to environment and experience.
The complete Attuned Perception Framework, including working papers, guides, and concept documents, is available in the APF Library on Google Drive – an open collection of writings and mapping guides that form the foundation of this work.
From time to time, I guide small workshops and journal-based classes where we explore perception together. These gatherings are conversational rather than instructional, with gentle prompts, maps, and a shared focus on the environment and experience.
If this resonates, I welcome connection. Many meaningful ideas begin as conversations.
Feel free to reach out to me via the contact page or follow ongoing writings on my Substack below.
Waldverloren is the narrative companion to this site — a reflective field journal where the ideas within the Attuned Perception Framework (APF) take shape through essays, poetry, and sensory observation.
Each piece explores how clarity arises through motion, attention, and environment — how sight, sound, scent, and sensitivity help us reconnect with meaning in a noisy world.
It is an ongoing inquiry into perception and place: thoughtful rather than instructional, poetic yet grounded in research.
Written for those who seek calm, resonance, and a more attuned way of being.